Acclimated

Every region has their own approach to weather. In Minnesota, as I recall, the weather is something you always talk about in polite conversation, however, no one makes a big deal about it. Weather nonchalance in the face of pretty regular weather extremes. Same with Arizona. It is hot as the face of the sun there, but people pretty much go about their business. Here in the Pacific Northwest, there are two weather-related social patterns. One is that you must affect that you prefer those cloudy days of endless drizzle (OK, maybe some of them do, how do I know?) to any other kind of weather. Two, whenever the weather goes to any extreme whatsoever, it must TAKE OVER YOUR LIFE COMPLETELY.

I think I can say with relative certainty that we finally really fit in here- in the weather spirit of the Northwest, this absolutely insane heatwave has ruled our lives for the entire week. The girls have embraced the new policy of brushing their teeth during a cool-down shower. Tonight when I told Muriel it was tooth brushing time, she said, "I want to spit on the floor!" The floor of the bathtub, but you can see why the born rebel appreciates this approach. We have been camping out in the basement for three nights- it started out about fifteen degrees cooler than the main floor, but now it's probably only about an eight degree spread. We have been trying to avoid cooking, moving the dog downstairs during the day, wearing only a diaper to bed (ok, that's Muriel too). Every little bit helps.

Tonight we went for dinner to the local crazy mall food court that we frequent, because we are all class all the time. Turns out it was not such an original idea. Everyone on the Eastside was trying to stay cool at the mall. Under normal circumstances, this mall is already like the Mos Eisley Cantina. Every species, humanoid and otherwise, hangs out at this mall and throws down some mah jong and gives crochet lessons and plays Magic: The Gathering. But throw a 102 degree evening into the mix, and the joint really jumps.

Also: because the weather here only gets really interesting in one direction or the other for about two weeks out of the year, we are ill equipped. So not only is the mall mobbed with people, it is mobbed with people attempting to dress for the searing heat of a border town when for most of the year they wear their fleece vest or the long sleeve polo shirt they got when their software release finally wrapped up. A sight to behold, is all I'm saying. The girls had penne pomodoro, Jim had the halibut bento box, I had the Italian chop chop. We sat and watched the refugees drifting past, peering at everyone's table as is the custom at this establishment, to see what they might want to order next time.

You know in the movies when there is a burst of ominous music or chase music or comic music, and the camera pans and there is an actual group of musicians there? Ha! We had the perfect soundtrack for the whimsically surreal, because of course the performer at the stage was an accordian player. We got Girl from Ipanema and this one tango we like, and other than that, a lot of songs that made you feel like any minute a troupe of mimes was going to come down from the ceiling on trapezes and infiltrate the crowd. We took the girls and two quarters to the carousel, but even that was mobbed, and I could see from the look on the faces of parents that had gotten there after us that they were prepared to pretend they had gotten there first.

We changed course to the ice cream place, a chain where ice cream is not good enough and must be enhanced with other sorts of dessert items. (Shout out to my MN homies- I miss the St. Paul Creamery like mad. Can't imagine the line you would have if you had the weather we have.) The stress of their deployment was beginning to tell on the ladies behind the counter, who were trying to direct the traffic through gritted teeth. Naomi stuck to her pattern of ordering based on color (watermelon sorbet, anyone?), and I was intimidated by the pissed off ice cream scooper into ordering a medium (which was gigantic!) mint chocolate something. Mmmm minty.

Home, toothbrushing in the shower, bed in the basement, and as the grownups sat out on the patio, listening to that guy a few houses down who shouts for HOURS on end (what is he shouting about?)... a sensation of coolness in the air! Awesome. Tomorrow it is supposed to only get to around 86, which is cooler than the inside of our house has been this week. We can go back to daydreaming about drizzle, waiting for the next big weather emergency to rock our world.

J. Bungler

Lately at work I have been disastrously effective at making mistakes. I make a mistake every day, it feels like, and two or three big ones per week. I know why it is happening- I am at a crossroads of many different projects, have only a minimal amount of ownership of most of them, and still have to keep track of them so I don't miss an important deadline like sending files off to be included in the manufacturing stream in advance of a product release. I have been a giant lucky duck in that none of my mistakes have had the impact they could have (whew!), but still, yuck.

This week, however, I am absolutely certain that I will make no major mistakes. Why? Because I completely exhausted any reasonable allotment for mistakes big and small for one human over the weekend. A narrative of this would be too long, so here's the list:

• Forgot to put the salt in the banana muffins. (It's only a small amount, but it matters.)
  
• FINALLY found the dog nail trimmer- cut the dog's poor toe. Blood!
• Took kids to beach on "hottest day of the summer"- clouds roll in, raindrops start falling.
• Put the half-n-half on to "heat but not boil" for homemade ice cream recipe, turned around, then back to stove minutes later to witness volcanic half-n-half eruption. It boiled alright.
• Thought I could use candy thermometer for hot water and yeast mixture (100 to 110 degrees) for first time ever homemade pizza dough. Realized that candy thermometer starts at 200 degrees.
• Couldn't remember what number cup of flour out of four I was on, for same pizza dough recipe, threw in one more, just in case.
• Next day, "punched down" dough, as instructed, waited for the second rise...er, no second rise.
• Tried to spread dough around on oiled parchment paper (also, thought kids would think this was super fun, but not so much) and transfer to grill - nowhere near round or flat.
• Set up ice cream maker (stand mixer attachment), churned, churned, churned, added strawberries...ice cream DID NOT FREEZE.
• Agreed to just pretend ice cream was milkshakes, tried to get attachment off stand mixer, spilled giant gloppy "milkshake" all over kitchen floor.
• (Great one to close with) Assumed dog's toe was done bleeding, after 24 hours, let her come downstairs with us to escape the blazing heat, found dog toe blood all over downstairs carpet.

I bandaged Luna's paw pretty thoroughly last night. It remains to be seen whether the bandage will persist through the day. The beach trip was really fun despite the raindrops. The pizza looked fairly grotesque but actually tasted good. The ice cream glop tasted great, and we'll eat some of the actual frozen variety tonight, assuming our actual freezer works better than our ice cream maker thingy.

Ah- and one item where I did not make a mistake- starting Naomi on the much-vaunted "chapter book" experience with The Boxcar Children, about a group of little go-getters who turn the specter of homelessness and orphandom into a delightful plucky adventure of resourcefulness, re-use, and cooperation. (Wonderfully, the author does not give the kids any chance whatsoever to cry, feel sad, or otherwise reflect on the fact that their parents are DEAD. Sheesh. But good for my purposes.) Naomi gets SO MAD when I won't read her more than one chapter before bed, and she spent the weekend constructing a faux boxcar in the corner of the living room and making Muriel be one of the brothers. Good stuff.

This week: Slumber party in the basement. It is hot as blazes in these parts, and the basement is, shall we say, khooler.

That's More Like It

Yeah, the professional photog is back on staff. When Jim got home on Sunday, we went out to a beach park our friends had told us about, and brought some sand diggy toys Muriel got for her birthday. It occurred to me that I had completely forgotten what it's like to be a kid, because of course these girls had to go in the water (even though the day was both gloomy and chilly), and got themselves extremely damp and sandy. It was a rousing success.

Oh, and on the way out, we passed a picnic, and two kids from the picnic group were maniacally chasing the ducks around. I suppressed an urge to scold. Then the bigger kid (seven, maybe?) picked up a handful of sand and gravel and hurled it at the duck, at close range. I can't remember what I said, something fairly innocuous like, "Hey, hey, hey- take it easy on our duck friends." We passed the picnic group, and that's when I noticed that they were eastern Europeans. duh duh dunnnnnnh! As we were leaving two of the guys started following us to the parking lot. Track suits, gold chains, shaved heads, grim expressions. Holy crap! I had picked the wrong duck-attacking kid to scold! But they were just getting something out of their car. Whew.

Today was a pretty great day. Work has been kind of brutal of late, and today things seemed a lot more under control for some reason. I left a teeny bit early, made some pasta in a hurry, and left it on the stove while we went up to the pool for a dip. Hopping around in two feet of water for forty minutes makes my kids hungry and sleepy, which meant a satisfyingly focused dinner at which Naomi had three servings of pasta and Muriel ate something like ten asparagus spears, and a lovely bedtime with no objections. After the dishes, I took Luna for a walk around the blueberry farm, where unscrupulous summer lovers were sneaking some berries in advance of the opening of U-Pick season. It was a fantastically beautiful evening.

I choose to dismiss the part where my employer mailed me a free "book," the title of which may as well have been "Get Your Family Skinnier." Thanks!

Girls' Weekend

Jim's Father's Day present, besides the disastrous garden stone, was a plane ticket to California. As delightful as family life is (and it is), I had to admit to myself that getting out of my deeply carved role for the few days I was out of town for my reunion weekend was more than a treat- it was (in a small but good way) life altering. So now it's Jim's turn, and this is the weekend- he's visiting our good friends who used to live in Minnesota, but have since moved to San Clemente, which from the sound of it is very nearly paradise. Who knows what he will get out of it, besides the dual treasures of seeing old friends and eating a lot of fresh seafood. What I am getting out of it is a weekend with the girls, in a more concentrated than usual sense.

This, too, has been good for me. I am having a lot of fun with them, of course. But it is also liberating to know that EVERYTHING is on me, and there's no grousing or resenting (my perception) that I have to do it all. I can't even resent Jim for being out of town- I sent him there. It feels good to just do what needs doing and not think anything of it. Can I carry this with me out of the weekend? I hope so.

So, what's been going on? Kid's choice dinner, Friday night = macaroni and cheese, shrimp gyoza, and corn. With chocolate milk. I ate a lot of gyoza. This morning we went to our favorite breakfast place, ate some eggs and pancakes, and rode the mini-carousel. Our friends came over to play after breakfast. We ran around, created a stressful and messy group painting project (not my best idea ever), and waved our ribbon sticks (more props to Gramma for the mad present buying skillz). We planted peas in our garden this year in an effort to just raise pea vines, our favorite veggie dish at the Chinese restaurant, but we don't really know how or when to harvest, and the result is that instead we just have a whole bunch of peas. Which little girls, it turns out, love to pick and eat. When I went out this evening to put away the wacky pop-up gazebo that I got as my latest free Employer Swag, the picnic blanket inside, strewn with eviscerated pea pods, looked like the set of a pea horror movie.

While Muriel napped, I tried to debut a new movie with Naomi- Babe. She was not having it. I am not sure what she didn't like about it, except maybe for the part where she had no idea what was going on. She convinced me to turn it off in favor of her favorite DVD- Here Come the ABCs by They Might Be Giants. So many of these wacky songs are firmly lodged in my mind's ear, and I know the same is true of my kids, because the other day when I was absentmindedly singing a refrain that is something like, "I C U, I C U, and U R OK..." Muriel said, no, I don't like that song, and agreed to hear "QU" instead (one of my favorite videos in the collection). Then at dinner, Naomi was singing "The Alphabet of Nations," which is extra fun to hear a kid sing, since they have no idea what the sometimes obscure country names actually are. Except for West Xylophone, of course.

After an extended laundry folding session in the basement (which is much cooler than the rest of our house), we decided to hit the pool. Last time we went Naomi had been been kind of rotten, outright ignoring my direct requests (for example, to get out of the pool and come to the locker room right. this. minute, that kind of thing). The consequence was to be not coming along next time we went swimming. But since today was the next time, and there is no option for leaving her behind- the only option was not going at all, and it was a HOT day! So we agreed she would wait ten minutes to get in the pool after Muriel and I went in. This worked out pretty well, though if Muriel could have at least tried to pretend she was having a good time without her sister, that might have made the consequences more consequential... Eventually, we all enjoyed the swim, if you can call scuttling around in a foot and a half of warm water swimming.

When I posted my temporary single mom status on FB today, someone made a crack about how now I'll have to take all the photos. I took this as a challenge. And since I am being all self sufficient and grrl power, I am downloading, exporting, and posting those photos, with no coaching. So there! They're not great, but they are pictures.

Getting ready for the trip to the pool. I wasn't able to actually get any photos at the pool, which is too bad, because the look of intense concentration on Muriel's face the whole time made it seem like she was not into it at all, when in fact the opposite was true.

After the swimming, we spent a few minutes on the playground at the club. Naomi figured out to get out on one of the bars to hang- it was pretty impressive. Muriel wanted a piece of that action.

OK, yes, I'm holding Muriel up. Was it convincing?

This girl just passed her 2 year old doctor check up with flying colors, and came out between 10th and 20th percentile for weight (I was thinking she was terribly skinny). Yea, Muriel!

So yeah, fun abounds on our girls' weekend. If I can just keep the yelling under control. Ha.

In Which Muriel Declares Independence from England and Being One

You guys, where to start? It has been one heck of a long weekend. I took Thursday off to get ready for a visit from my parents and my 12-year-old nephew. They got in that evening around the spaghetti and meatball hour. Naomi had been very excited for their visit- she's a devoted fan of Gramma, and Muriel is mildly obsessed with Grampa, but unfortunately for both elders, the girls' little hearts were swayed by the cousin. They followed that poor kid around, called out for him if he left the room, and glommed onto him in every way imaginable. And he was the best sport imaginable, really- what pre-teen boy would be as kind as that to two little maniacs? He deserves a medal.

We engaged in some low-key tourism on Friday, nothing out of the ordinary. Also, it was extremely hot, and I found an inflatable squirty thing we got for Christmas (thanks, AP!) in the basement and made Naomi's day.

Saturday was Independence Day (if you missed that somehow), which meant another trip north for the Kirkland Fourth of July Parade.


Yes to the WWII POWs, yes to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, YES to the Veterans for Peace, the Unicycle Kids, the Blue Thunder drum line, and the beloved DeLorean Club. But Kirkland, PLEASE add some musical numbers to your parade! Besides the drum line, we had some kind of church youth group banging pails, a band of Indian youths who chose not to play as they went past us, and the Rainbow City band, playing, you guessed it, Thriller. Not that I didn't appreciate it. But that was it for the whole parade. It's like going to a party where there's not enough food. It's nice that there's a party, but before long, it's difficult to focus on anything else except how hungry you are. Kirkland, gimme a beat!

It is with some shame and resignation that I further admit that Naomi declared her favorite part of the parade this time to be the girls with the puff balls (a.k.a., the cheerleaders from a local high school). Sigh.

After some sternly enforced napping back at the house, we had some traditional Fourth of July fare (here's where I admit in a nod to my previous simile that I fear I underfed my guests- especially my nephew, who is used to eating what his family eats- because I am in the groove of feeding the four of us, and was constantly running out of everything) in the backyard. We had agreed to try to see some fireworks, the first time for Naomi, so she stayed up LATER THAN EVER in the interest of this outing. My mom, being the best toy buyer I know, had brought presents for the girls that included a set of beautiful silk pieces in rainbow colors. Naomi accessorized with them all weekend long, and that is the reason she looked like this at the fireworks.
Oh- my mom had also bought her a super cute wristwatch, and someone told her the fireworks would start when the little hand was on the ten. At some point I thought it would be a good idea to go to the bathroom before they started, so we hit the portable, which was unfortunately pitch dark inside. Yikes. When we were in there, she started to sound a little panicky, and I was all ready to calm her down, and she said "This was a terrible idea!" Ha! She explained that it was too dark to see her watch, and what if the little hand made it to the ten, and the fireworks started, while we were in there?! Fortunately we made it back to the blanket. We had a good spot, good luck with parking, overall the kind of fireworks experience that would make you consider going again. Naomi enjoyed them with her hands over her ears the whole time. Happy Birthday, America!
It was fun to have my folks in town. While out doing their own thing, my parents went to Fred Meyer, which is a store here that sells really just about everything with the exception of cars and houses. They loved it- my dad said it was like Walmart, but cleaner and nicer! Sweet. A woman helped them at the watch counter, and because my dad is that guy, he asked her where her accent was from. Tobago, she told him, and then she asked him if he knew who he looks like. Fidel Castro. Ha! She said it was OK, Uncle Fidel loves his people. When my parents told me this story later, I had a stomachache from laughing. My dad has gotten Burl Ives and the occasional Santa, but Fidel is a new (awesome) one.

The rest of the weekend was focused on Muriel and her big party. We decided to have a barbecue Sunday afternoon, which turned into a fried chicken-cue instead. Jim went and bought friend chicken at some place in Seattle that is ostensibly quite famous for it (it was good), and we threw down the usual accompaniments. The party was fun (I thought) and well-attended, and included our dear friends and a visitor they brought along, friends from Naomi's school, a friend from Muriel's school, and one of her teachers and his wife and beautiful baby girl (who is Muriel's darling- she loves that baby). Oh, and a coworker of Jim's. Having Muriel's teacher there was excellent, not only because he is so nice, but because he obligingly demonstrated his super niceness to my parents (who are not always so subtle in their opinions of my status as a working mother), and they really liked him.

Muriel clearly comprehended that the party was for her. She looked wicked awesome in her birthday dress, and even kept her hair clips in for a while.

What I should really do is devote a post or five to the girl of the week. Muriel is such a fantastic and complicated little person. She is clever and musical, sympathetic, quick to anger, quick to apologize. She likes to sing and dance. She likes to go along with her sister, and utterly thwart her sister. She puts everything in her mouth, but rarely actually eats anything (food included). She makes funny faces. She insists on having her "injury" kissed whenever the dog licks her (no thanks!). She shouts the lyrics to "Doe, a deer" as though they are a rallying cry for freedom. She is the life of the party. And now she has been around for two years- can you believe it? We're so glad to have her.